Alternative Oil Spill Occurrence Estimators for the Beaufort/Chukchi Sea OCS (Statistical Approach)

This study analyzes GOM statistics for pipeline and platform oil spills, and with statistically appropriate techniques develops Poisson models for spill rates. These models are tested through analysis of exponential inter-spill intervals for several exposure variables. These exposure variables include time, oil production, pipeline mile-years, and platform-years. Weibull and lognormal models for spill volumes are developed and used to support analyses at spill thresholds of 50, 100, 500, and 1000 barrels. In each case confidence limits are calculated and reported. The stability of the results has been confirmed for different time periods.